The Post-Indiana Future for Christians

I spent a long time on the phone last night with a law professor at one of the country’s elite law schools. This professor is a practicing Christian, deeply closeted in the workplace; he is convinced that if his colleagues in academia knew of his faith, they would make it very hard for him. We made contact initially by e-mail — he is a reader of this blog — and last night, by phone. He agreed to speak with me about the Indiana situation on condition that I not identify him by name or by institution. I do know his identity, and when he tells me that he is “well-informed about the academy and the Supreme Court,” I assure you that from where he sits, and teaches, and from his CV, he is telling the truth.

I will call him Prof. Kingsfield, after the law professor in The Paper Chase.

What prompted his reaching out to me? “I’m very worried,” he said, of events of the last week. “The constituency for religious liberty just isn’t there anymore.”

Like me, what unnerved Prof. Kingsfield is not so much the details of the Indiana law, but the way the overculture treated the law. “When a perfectly decent, pro-gay marriage religious liberty scholar like Doug Laycock, who is one of the best in the country — when what he says is distorted, you know how crazy it is.”

“Alasdair Macintyre is right,” he said. “It’s like a nuclear bomb went off, but in slow motion.” What he meant by this is that our culture has lost the ability to reason together, because too many of us want and believe radically incompatible things.

But only one side has the power. When I asked Kingsfield what most people outside elite legal and academic circles don’t understand about the way elites think, he said “there’s this radical incomprehension of religion.”

“They think religion is all about being happy-clappy and nice, or should be, so they don’t see any legitimate grounds for the clash,” he said. “They make so many errors, but they don’t want to listen.”

To elites in his circles, Kingsfield continued, “at best religion is something consenting adult should do behind closed doors. They don’t really understand that there’s a link between Sister Helen Prejean’s faith and the work she does on the death penalty. There’s a lot of looking down on flyover country, one middle America.

“The sad thing,” he said, “is that the old ways of aspiring to truth, seeing all knowledge as part of learning about the nature of reality, they don’t hold. It’s all about power. They’ve got cultural power, and think they should use it for good, but their idea of good is not anchored in anything. They’ve got a lot of power in courts and in politics and in education. Their job is to challenge people to think critically, but thinking critically means thinking like them. They really do think that they know so much more than anybody did before, and there is no point in listening to anybody else, because they have all the answers, and believe that they are good.”

On the conservative side, said Kingsfield, Republican politicians are abysmal at making a public case for why religious liberty is fundamental to American life.

“The fact that Mike Pence can’t articulate it, and Asa Hutchinson doesn’t care and can’t articulate it, is shocking,” Kingsfield said. “Huckabee gets it and Santorum gets it, but they’re marginal figures. Why can’t Republicans articulate this? We don’t have anybody who gets it and who can unite us. Barring that, the craven business community will drag the Republican Party along wherever the culture is leading, and lawyers, academics, and media will cheer because they can’t imagine that they might be wrong about any of it.”

Kingsfield said that the core of the controversy, both legally and culturally, is the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey (1992), specifically the (in)famous line, authored by Justice Kennedy, that at the core of liberty is “the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” As many have pointed out — and as Macintyre well understood — this “sweet mystery of life” principle (as Justice Scalia scornfully characterized it) kicks the supporting struts out from under the rule of law, and makes it impossible to resolve rival moral visions except by imposition of power.

“Autonomous self-definition is at the root of all this,” Prof. Kingsfield said. We are now at the point, he said, at which it is legitimate to ask if sexual autonomy is more important than the First Amendment.

The implications of the past week for small-o orthodox Christians — that is, those who hold to traditional Christian teaching on homosexuality and the nature of marriage — are broad. There is the legal dimension, and there is a cultural dimension, which Kingsfield sees (rightly, I think) as far more important.

First, the legal. Kingsfield said he reviewed Ross Douthat’s questions, and thinks they are a good framework for trying to figure out the road ahead. I didn’t pin Kingsfield down on his specific answers to each of Douthat’s questions; we spent an hour and a half on the phone as it was, and I didn’t want to rob too much of his time. But I did take some notes about his general views.

“I read that list and I think it’s very useful,” Kingsfield said. “I think the bulwarks in terms of a parent’s right to raise a child, and to educate a child, are more durable than others.”

A college professor who is already tenured is probably safe. Those who aren’t tenured, are in danger. Those who are believed to be religious, or at least religious in ways the legal overculture believes constitutes bigotry, will likely never be hired. For example, the professor said, he was privy to the debate within a faculty hiring meeting in which the candidacy of a liberal Christian was discussed. Though the candidate appeared in every sense to be quite liberal in her views, the fact that she was an open Christian prompted discussion as to whether or not the university would be hiring a “fundamentalist.”

“I think in terms of hiring people [within the academy], that’s quite acceptable in people’s minds,” said Kingsfield. (And, I would add, not just within the academy.)

Kingsfield says that religious schools will have a substantial degree of protection in the law, at least for a while, to the extent that the school can be described as a part of a particular church, with clear doctrines that it expects its members to live by and uphold.

“There’s going to be some question as to whether this applies to parachurch charities, schools, shelters, things like that,” he says. “If you’re a church you’re pretty much protected in who you hire, pay, and so forth. If you are a school and are careful only to hire people of your denomination, you’re probably okay, though there are questions about the person who says ‘I’m a good Catholic, though I’m gay.’

“It could be that if bishop certifies that you are a Catholic in good standing, you’re okay,” he continued. “Catholics have a clear line of what constitutes the visible church, and what it means to be Catholic. So do the Orthodox. But if you are an Evangelical church that has a more general statement of faith, and depends on a shared assumption that its non-married members will live a chaste life, I’m not so sure that’s going to hold.”

For hierarchical, doctrinally well-defined churches, much depends legally on what the bishops do. “To the extent that some of the Catholic bishops want to punt, like the New Jersey bishop [Bootkoski of Metuchen] did with that schoolteacher [Patricia Jannuzzi], I’m not sure at all what happens to them.”

(Bootkoski arranged for Jannuzzi to be fired from her position teaching at a Catholic school in his diocese after a Facebook post in which she stated Catholic teaching on homosexuality and the family, but did so intemperately. “The teacher’s comments were disturbing and do not reflect the Church’s teachings of acceptance,” the bishop said in a public statement. From what Kingsfield said, this might well have laid down a marker making it hard for the Diocese to defend itself in court in future challenges over hiring.)

“If you’re a Catholic in San Francisco, in a crazy social environment, you’re in good shape, because you have [Archbishop] Salvatore Cordileone, who is going to hold the line. In Philadelphia, you have Archbishop Chaput. But if you’re in Indiana or New Jersey, you’re going to have trouble. There’s a way in which the vigilance of the bishop in governing the local church will matter in court. If the bishops won’t stand up for [orthodox Christian teaching], who will?”

“Even Reformation churches that have specific doctrines that they police, they’ll probably be okay,” Kingsfield continued. “But again, if you define yourselves by a very general statement, even if your ethos is culturally conservative, it’s going to be harder. The low church people may wind up in a position where they have to start policing their churches much more closely in terms of doctrine.”

This could well push religious schools into making hiring decisions that they’re not comfortable with. Say, for example, that a Catholic school had no trouble hiring a chemistry teacher who openly advocated for same-sex marriage, because that teacher was in the school to teach chemistry. His views on gay marriage are irrelevant, in practice. The school may have a different standard for hiring its religion teachers, or its social studies teachers, requiring them to be more doctrinally in line with the Church. But that is a distinction that may not hold up in court under challenge, Kingsfield said.

The result could be that religious schools have to start policing orthodoxy in terms of all their hires — a situation imposing standards far more strict than many schools may wish to live by, but which may be necessary to protect the school’s legal interests.

Kingsfield said homeschooling, and homeschooling-ish things (e.g., co-ops), are going to become increasingly important to orthodox Christians, especially as they see established religious schools folding on this issue.

Businesses, however, are going to have a very hard time resisting what’s coming. Not that they would try. “The big companies have already gone over,” said Kingsfield.

“Most anti-discrimination laws have a certain cut off – they don’t apply if you have 15 employees or less,” he said. “You could have an independent, loosely affiliated network of artisans, working together. If you can refer people to others within the network, that could work. You won’t be able to scale up, but that’s not such a bad thing.”

Kingsfield said religious colleges and universities are going to have to think hard about their identities.

“Colleges that don’t receive federal funding – Hillsdale and Grove City are two I can think of – are going to be in better position, because federal regulations force a lot of crazy stuff on you,” he said. “I think it would be really wise for small religious institutions to think hard if they can cut the cord of federal funding and can find wealthy donors to step in.”

Kingsfield said we are going to have to watch closely the way the law breaks regarding gender identity and transgenderism. If the courts accept the theory that gender is a social construct — and there is a long line of legal theory and jurisprudence that says that it is — then the field of antidiscrimination law is bound to be expanded to cover, for example, people with penises who consider themselves women. The law, in other words, will compel citizens to live as if this were true — and religious liberty will, in general, be no fallback. This may well happen.

What about the big issue that is on the minds of many Christians who pay attention to this fight: the tax-exempt status of churches and religious organizations? Will they be Bob Jones’d over gay rights?

Kingsfield said that this is too deeply embedded in American thought and law to be at serious risk right now, but gay rights proponents will probably push to tie the tax exemption on charities with how closely integrated they are within churches. The closer schools and charities are tied to churches, especially in their hiring, the greater protection they will enjoy.

The accreditation issue is going to be a much stickier wicket. Accreditation is tied to things like the acceptance of financial aid, and the ability to get into graduate schools.

“There was a professor at Penn last year who wrote an article in the Chronicle of Higher Educationcalling for the end of accrediting religious colleges and universities,” Kingsfield said. “It was a Richard Dawkins kind of thing, just crazy. The fact that someone taking a position this hostile felt very comfortable putting this in the Chronicle tells me that there’s a non-trivial number of professors willing to believe this.”

Gordon College has faced pressure from a regional accrediting authority over its adherence to traditional Christian sexual morals re: gay rights.

“Accreditation is critical to being admitted to law schools and medical schools,” Kingsfield said. “College accreditation will matter for some purposes of sports, federal aid, and for the ability to be admitted by top graduate schools. Ghettoization for Christians could be the result.”

“In California right now, judges can’t belong to the Boy Scouts now. Who knows if in the future, lawyers won’t be able to belong to churches that are considered hate groups?” he said. “It’s certainly true that a lot of law firms will not now hire people who worked on cases defending those on the traditional marriage side. It’s going to close some professional doors. I certainly wouldn’t write about this stuff in my work, not if I wanted to have a chance at tenure. There’s a question among Christian law professors right now: do you write about these issues and risk tenure? This really does distort your scholarship. Christianity could make a distinct contribution to legal discussions, but it’s simply too risky to say what you really think.”

The emerging climate on campus of microaggressions, trigger warnings, and the construal of discourse as a form of violence is driving Christian professors further into the closet, the professor said.

“If I said something that was construed as attacking a gay student, I could have my life made miserable with a year or two of litigation — and if I didn’t have tenure, there could be a chance that my career would be ruined,” he said. “Even if you have tenure, a few people who make allegations of someone being hateful can make a tenured professor’s life miserable.”

“What happened to Brendan Eich” — the tech giant who was driven out of Mozilla for having made a small donation years earlier to the Prop 8 campaign — “is going to start happening to a lot of people, and Christians had better be ready for it. The question I keep thinking about is, why would we want to do that to people? But that’s where we are now.”

I pointed out that the mob hysteria that descended on Memories Pizza, the mom & pop pizza shop in small-town Indiana that had to close its doors (temporarily, one hopes) after its owners answered a reporter’s question truthfully, is highly instructive to the rest of us.

“You’re right,” he said. “Memories Pizza teaches us all a lesson. What is the line between prudently closing our mouths and closeting ourselves, and compromising our faith? Christians have to start thinking about that seriously.”

“We have to fall back to defensive lines and figure out where those lines are. It’s not going to be persecution like the older Romans, or even communist Russia,” he added. “But what’s coming is going cause a lot of people to fall away from the faith, and we are going to have to be careful about how we define and clarify what Christianity is.”

“If I were a priest or pastor, I don’t know what I would advise people about what to say and what not to say in public about their faith,” Kingsfield said.

There is a bitter irony in the fact that gays coming out of the closet coincides with traditional religious people going back into the closet.

“Gays have legitimately said that it’s a big deal to have laws and a culture in which they have been forced to lie about who they are, which is what you do when you put them in the position of not being able to be open about their sexuality,” Kingsfield said.

“‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ forced them to segment off a part of their lives in a way that was wrong. What they don’t realize today is that the very same criticism they had about ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ can be applied to what is happening now to Christians: you can do what you like in private, but don’t bring who you are into the public square, or you can be punished for it.”

On the political side, Kingsfield said it’s important to “surrender political hope” — that is, that things can be solved through political power. Republicans can be counted on to block the worst of what the Democrats attempt – which is a pretty weak thing to rely on, but it’s not nothing. “But a lot of things can be done by administrative order,” he said. “I’m really worried about that.”

And on the cultural front? Cultural pressure is going to radically reduce orthodox Christian numbers in the years go come. The meaning of what it means to be a faithful Christian is going to come under intense fire, Kingsfield said, not only from outside the churches, but from within. There will be serious stigma attached to standing up for orthodox teaching on homosexuality.

“And if the bishops are like these Indiana bishops, where does that leave us?” he said. “We have a problem in the current generation, but what I really worry about is what it means to transmit the faith to the next generation.”

“A lot of us will be able to ‘pass’ if we keep our mouths shut, but it’s going to be hard to tell who believes what,” Kingsfield said. “In [my area], there’s a kind of secret handshake that traditional Christians use to identify ourselves to each other when we meet. Forming those subterranean, catacomb church networks is not easy, but it’s terribly vital right now.”

“Your blog is important for us who feel alone where we are, because it let’s us know that there are others who feel this way,” Kingsfield said. “My wife says you should stop blogging and write your Benedict Option book right now. There is such a need for it. My hope for this book is that it will help Christians like us meet and build more of the networks that are going to carry us through.”

Kingsfield said he and his wife send their children to a classical Christian school in their area. “I can’t tell you how happy that makes me,” he said. “Studying the past is so important. If you have an understanding of where we came from [as a culture], you can really see how insane we have gone.”

Through the classical Christian school community, he said, he and his wife have met believers from other traditions who are very sympathetic to the threat to all orthodox Christians, whether they are Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox.

“We have to get to know them better. We have to network with them. Our kids have to grow up with those kids, even if it means some driving, some traveling, arranging joint vacations,” Kingsfield said.

The professor brought up the book The Nurture Assumption, a book that explains how culture is transmitted to kids.

“Basically, it says that culture comes through your peer group,” he said. “The most important thing is to make sure your kids are part of a peer group where their peers believe the same things. Forming a peer group is hard when it’s difficult to network and find other parents who believe what you do.”

While each family must be a “little church” — some Catholics call it a “domestic monastery,” which fits well with the idea of the Benedict Option — Kingsfield says the importance of community in forming moral consciences should lead Christians to think of their parishes and congregations as the basic unit of Christian life.

Hearing Kingsfield say this, I thought about how there is a de facto schism within churches now. It will no longer be sufficient to be part of a congregation where people are at odds on fundamental Christian beliefs, especially when there is so much pressure from the outside world. I thought of Neuhaus’s Law: where orthodoxy is optional, it will sooner or later be proscribed. It is vital to find a strong church where people know what they believe and why, and are willing to help others in the church teach those truths and live them out joyfully.

This is a time, said Kingsfield, for Christians to read about church history, including the lives of saints, and to acquaint themselves with the fact that the Christian church has actual roots, and teachings. It is not about what you “feel” is Christian. That’s the way of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, which is the death of Christianity.

“The most important question for Christians parents to ask themselves is, do we have a vibrant church?,” he said. “Sadly, only a small number of places have them. My family is in one. Our kids are growing up with good examples that they can look up to, and good older kids who hang on because they can stand together.”

Some people taking the Benedict Option will head for the hills, Kingsfield said, but that will be a trivial number, and that won’t be an answer for most of us.

“We need to study more the experience of Orthodox Jews and Amish,” he said. “None of us are going to be living within an eruv or practicing shunning. What we should focus on is endogamy.”

Endogamy means marriage only within a certain clan or in-group.

“Intermarriage is death,” Kingsfield said. “Not something like Catholic-Orthodox, but Christian-Jew, or high church-low church. I just don’t think Christians are focused on that, but the Orthodox Jews get it. They know how much this matters in creating a culture in which transmitting the faith happens. For us Christians, this is going to mean matchmaking and youth camps and other things like that. It probably means embracing a higher fertility rate, and celebrating bigger families.”

The professor said we also have to band together behind religious liberty legal organizations like The Becket Fund and the Alliance Defending Freedom. And we have to make connections not only across denominational lines, but religious ones too — that is, with Jews, Muslims, and Mormons.

“It can’t be said loudly enough that yes, we have big theological disagreements, but the more we can stand together, the more likely we are to succeed,” he said. “The more our struggle is framed as a specifically Christian thing, the more likely we are to lose in the courts.”

Why? Because of liberal culture, and its demonization of Christians as the Other. President Obama will speak out for the Yazidis, but not for the Iraqi Christians, he said. When he talks about the martyred Egyptians in Libya, he doesn’t acknowledge that they were killed for being Christians. It’s simply a fact that there is tremendous animus against Christians within the liberal culture, and that liberal elites will tolerate things from Orthodox Jews and Muslims that they will not from Christians. Small-o orthodox Christians had better grasp that the religious liberties of Jews and Muslims are our own religious liberties, and make friendships and tactical alliances across these boundaries.

More broadly, he said all Christians must take a lesson from many Evangelicals and raise their children to know from the beginning that we are different from everybody else in this culture. We now live in a clearly post-Christian society, and Christian conservatives had better get that straight.

“There are a lot of conservatives who are very chest-thumping pro-America, but there’s an argument that the seeds of this are built into American individualism,” Kingsfield said. “We Christians have to understand where our allegiances really must to lie. The public schools were meant to make good citizens of us and now are being used to make good Moralistic Therapeutic Deists of us.”

Christians should put their families on a “media fast,” he says. “Throw out the TV. Limit Netflix. You cannot let in contemporary stuff. It’s garbage. It’s a sewage pipe into your home. So many parents think they’re holding the line, but they let their kids have unfettered access to TV, the Internet, and smartphones. You can’t do that.

“And if you can’t trust that the families of the kids that your kids play with are on the same team with all this, then find another peer group among families that are,” he said. “It really is that important.”

And for secondary education? Kingsfield teaches at one of the top universities in the country, a gateway to elite advancement, but says he’s not sure he would want his kids attending there. It depends on God’s calling. He remains there because for now, he sees that he has a mission to mentor undergraduates who need a professor like him to help them deal with the things coming at them. The fact that he has his kids in a good school and a good parish makes this possible. But he recognizes that by the time his children become college age, the landscape may have shifted such that the elite universities are too hostile.

“I could still imagine having a kid who was really strong in his faith, and believing that God was calling him to going to a prestige college. I’m not ready to say ‘never’ for that, but I do think there are a lot of kids that we need to steer away from such hostile places, and into smaller, reliably Christian schools where they can be built up in their faith, and not have to deal with such hostility before they’re strong enough to combat it.”

It’s hard to say what kind of landscape Christians will be looking at twenty, thirty years from now. Kingsfield says he has gay colleagues in the university, people who are in their sixties and seventies now, who came of age in a time where a strong sense of individual liberty protected them. They still retain a devotion to liberty, seeing how much it matters to despised minorities.

“That generation is superseded by Social Justice Warriors in their thirties who don’t believe that they should respect anybody who doesn’t respect them,” Kingsfield said. “Those people are going to be in power before long, and we may not be protected.”

Bottom line: the Benedict Option is our the only path forward for us. Indiana shows that. “Write that book,” he said.

OK, I will.

UPDATE: From a reader (who signed his name and gave his institutional affiliation, but I’m keeping this anonymous). He teaches at a major public law school:

Loved the article. I come from a similar background as Kingsfield, although a different legal focus … . At my school, I am the only evangelical Christian within the tenure system, or at least the only open one. While I don’t think my institution is quite as bad as what Kingsfield describes, Kingsfield’s observations are consistent with mine and/or with observations by Christian colleagues at other schools. The attitude toward truth that was displayed by the left on the Indiana RFRA is dominant in legal academia. We live in a culture that is now largely post-rational, post-modern, and post-law. Power and emotions drive issues in a way that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago.

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271 Responses to The Post-Indiana Future for Christians

I suspect that Rod and I want pretty much want some variant of the same thing. I think that Rod believes that he’s promoting ideas that will take us there. But history has shown us time and again that religiously thick culture leads to serfdom almost as predictably as socialism.

I comment here because it sharpens my own thinking. I’m also curious about how social conservatives think and formulate arguments. Because this blog is not an echo chamber, I can observe that process better here than elsewhere. Also, the responses to what I write here help me identify and shore up weaknesses in my own thinking.

If this were just an echo chamber for religious conservatives, I wouldn’t bother coming here. I may come off terse in writing, due to my having spent a number of years as a litigation associate. I’m actually a fairly laid-back guy who simply takes life as it comes. I’m a very typical INTP.

If my question is not intrusive, in what sense does your relative consider himself to be “gay” if he is “celibate and a practicing Christian”? This is a sincere question, intended in no way to be rhetorical. I don’t understand the logic of defining oneself by one’s appetites, and it seems to me that no good can come of so doing. Please forgive me if my question is intrusive.

I’m not going to speak for my relation here, because I’m not sure what his answer would be, but I’ll answer based on how I see things.

Left-handed people often refer to themselves by the moniker “lefty”, but that doesn’t define them in any meaningful sense as persons. It’s merely a descriptive and useful way to convey to others a preference or requirement that they use their left hand in writing and other hand-dominance dependent activities.

Similarly, “gay” is shorthand, a less clinical-sounding and modern version of the terms “same-sex attracted” and “homosexual”. I’m aware that some people attach other levels of meaning to the term gay, but I do not, nor do any of the gay people I know personally.

To my mind, calling yourself or another person gay no more defines them as a person than calling them blond or skinny or Asian. A particularly avid carnivore could certainly call himself a “meat lover” without defining himself by his appetites, no?

No doubt some people choose to reduce their entire identities to one particular fact about themselves. That’s a bad idea regardless of which fact it is — every person is far more than any one detail. It’s also true that some people try to impose an identity on others externally based on one detail about them. That’s a pretty bad idea, too.

So many comments. As I was driving home from the Great Vigil, I had a thought about churches that teach that homosexual behavior is sinful. First off–Christians aren’t the only ones that teach that. Orthodox Jews and Muslims, and (I believe) some Hindus teach that homosexual sex is wrong. So if they come after the Christians, they’d have to come after everybody. Second–there is a similar practice that some churches teach simply cannot be–and that is female clergy. As far as I know there is NOBODY on the left who gives a rip whether Roman Catholics and many conservative Protestant churches refuse to ordain women. I’ve never heard of any traditional maker of vestments (and if you want a perfect example of a business person expressing their faith I’d say a business that creates vestments and clergy clothing and/or liturgical supplies is about as good an example as you can find) refusing to sell a chausable to a female Episcopal priest.

I really don’t think this freakout is about religious freedom. I suspect it’s a divide and conquer tactic to keep people scared and suspicious of each other’s motives. And yes, I do think the elite/progressives think they know best–trads and conservatives are not wrong to be driven batsh*t by their condescension.

I’m glad you eventually got the help you needed from the mental health profession, and I applaud you for putting in the hard work toward recovering from alcoholism. From what I understand, that’s no small accomplishment.

All I’m asking is that my relative have the same opportunity with his depression.

You may have missed the details that my family member is gay but chaste and a practicing Christian. Even if I stipulate for purpose of conversation that alcoholism and homosexuality are analogous pathologies (the mental health field generally rejects that analogy quite strongly, and has done since the early 1970s) — my relation would be in the same category as an alcoholic who never takes a drink.

Do you think it would be appropriate for a psychiatrist to refuse to treat recovering alcoholics with a strong track record of not drinking simply because of their proclivity? If not, how would you distinguish the case of my relative who has a proclivity toward members of his same gender but never acts on it?

Ugh, I posted this in the other thread by accident. But it belongs here.

Rod and “Kingsfield”,

I read the initial post from Kingsfield with some trepidation. If this is actually the situation that Kingsfield has experienced, and I have no reason to doubt him, then it really sucks. As a biologist working at a university now (though the nice thing about biology is that I have career options other than academia, if I decide academia is not for me), I’m a bit worried about my own future. I’m not too worried, for two reasons though.

1) As someone mentioned above, there’s a distinction between state and private universities here. Harvard can, if they want, choose not to hire evangelical Christians or Orthodox Christians for their history department. The University of Massachusetts at Amherst cannot, and they would get hit by massive antidiscrimination lawsuits if they tried. Public universities- which educate most of our students and hire most of our faculty- are under an obligation not to discriminate on grounds of religion.

2) At a more personal level, I think the hard sciences will be better off in this regard than the humanities, and especially better off than fields like law and legal academia (which, from what I understand from my hotshot lawyer younger brother, revolves around signaling, status competition, and pure subjectivity to a degree it’s difficult for me to believe exists). No field of study is going to be immune, but I do think that to whatever extent anti-Christian bias in the academy exists (I have never experienced it myself), the hard sciences will be relatively safe from it, just as they were relatively safe from censorship in the Soviet Union and Wilhelmine Germany and continue to be so in modern China.

The reason is because scientists have a (relatively) objective standard to assess the quality of their work: experimental validation, and the behavior of the natural world, assessed by statistics. If a capitalist scientist in a Communist society makes a discovery in organic chemistry that is both true and important, then even if his views are objectionable to the authorities, no one can gainsay the quality of his work: it’s passed the test of experiment. And the same is true for a Christian scientist in an atheist world, or vice versa.

Of course there is some wiggle room, especially where the sciences venture into the more speculative/metaphysical (certain branches of physics, neuroscience, etc.) or where they brush up against hot button culture war issues (especially where human behavioural ecology intersects with anthropology and psychology). Nevertheless, I think it’s true that the more one’s field of study follows the canons of experiment and objective truth, the less one will fall victim to theological or political prejudice. The near future will probably look brighter for Christian molecular biologists or physiologists than for Christian historians or psychologists, and especially more so than for Christian professors of law or literature

If, on the other hand, the majority of the people here are secular progressives who both believe Rod is an intelligent conservative but also believe it is acceptable to either mock him as a paranoiac or sit back passively while your peers do it…

I read American Conservative for principled, intelligent articulation of conservative views, absent the fear, ugliness, and paranoid screeching found elsewhere. In particular I appreciate the quality of the comments and the willingness of decent people with different beliefs to interact with civility in good faith.

There’s an ‘awwwww…’ codicil to the linked post, so go ahead and read it first now if you haven’t already – I’ll wait…

…okay back? Here’s the rest of the story – a couple of weeks after I posted that, I lost an R/C quadcopter in a fly-away incident and thought to myself, “Who’s that patron saint of finding lost stuff. I should give him a try.”

So after a bit of internet research later, I learned that Saint Anthony of Padua is not only the Patron Saint of finding lost objects, but also that:

“The saint was noted for bringing people back to the faith and opposing heresy. He encouraged those fallen away to return to the church, but instead of aggressively raging against heresy he focused on the treasures of the faith, preaching the Gospel to win them back. He also won them over by speaking directly to them, using language they could understand.”

For this reason, he’s also popularly credited as the Patron Saint of Lost Souls.

But what has any of this to do with anything?

Well, remember the young fosterling we are temporarily looking after who was referenced in the earlier link?

His name is Anthony…

Naturally, I took Saint Anthony as my Patron Saint.

I’d be more than happy to discuss this at further link with you, Hector. Rod can give you my e-mail address.

I honestly don’t know if the condition of alcoholism could be similar to that of homosexuality, as I am not gay. (However, curiously, nearly every gay man I’ve known in my progressive left-coast city is a heavy drinker. But I digress.)

Another commenter here made the point that the psychiatrist might not feel he is well-equipped to deal with sexual orientation issues. That could very well be the case. This particular therapist may feel that as long as your relative refuses to associate his homosexuality (whether acted upon or not) with his depression, he may be in a kind of denial. This is pure speculation on my part. But, if a therapist believes that homosexuality is intrinsically disordered, and if a patient sees no correlation between his sexual identity and his problems with depression, then perhaps a therapist might view that as similar to an active alcoholic who refuses to admit that his disordered drinking has any relation to his depression.

I do not know of any therapist who would refuse to treat a recovered alcoholic per se. But a recovered alcoholic is different than a chaste homosexual in that the homosexual will probably still feel same sex desire, whereas the recovered alcoholic feels no desire to consume alcohol. In a truly recovered alcoholic, the compulsion to drink has been lifted, and the drinker is free.

I don’t believe one can go much further in the analogy than this: a chaste homosexual might be like the “white knuckler” drinker who, even though he physically resists taking a drink, still desires the drink, and struggles with the compulsion in thought and feeling. So, to that degree, a therapist might not feel well equipped to deal with the underlying problem.

As deeply unpopular it is to mention this, there are many cases of people who identified as gay who were released from that identity and went on to marry happily and raise children. They no longer felt the compulsion to have sex with members of their own gender. These people might be thought of as “recovered.” Although most gay people will accept their identity and not wish to change it, for those who are deeply troubled or unhappy with it, I think it may be analogous to other addictions, which can be spiritually healed.

@Rod: and @Hector_St_Clare: Rod, I do read the articles before commenting.

There is no such thing as “cultural endogamy” that does not have a genetic component, eventually, if the people doing the endogamizing have children.

Agreed that in the first generation or two, there is enough genetic diversity brought to the table that deleterious effects won’t be observed.

But do you want your “cultural endogamy” to result in a culture that lasts? If you do, then you are going to have to deal with the negative effects of lack of genetic diversity.

Other commenters here dealt with this seriously, like mentioning genetic screening for Tay-Sachs disease among Orthodox Jews, or mentioning whether or not such genetic screening might be seen as eugenic.

“As to the atmosphere of hostility out there, these are your chickens come home to roost. Only power matters. Tolerance is suicide. Kill or be eaten. Gay activists learned these things from YOUR movement over the past century. They were forged in the hellfire you unleashed upon them, and you still can’t seem to draw the slightest connection.”

I am unclear just what those actions are. I just don’ see all that many examples of home raids for those who choose this form of expression.

They don’t seem to have been barred from being influential whatever their professions.

One press: keep their sex life private. And as the laws around the country folded on sodomy, what is that you claim christians have done?

What bothers me is how not only the author of this article but so many commentators have a flawed view of the history of Christianity. Labeling a view as “Orthodox Christianity” bestows on it a standing as THE official form of Christianity. America has had multiple denominations since its inception and furthermore there are theological disputes going back centuries. In many situations, feelings run high because some of those on both sides of the debate see themselves as devout Christians. This is exacerbated by the feeling that the some politically active fundamentalists maintain a smug disrespect for non-fundamentalist Christians.

I’m someone who is politically an Independent who leans Libertarian and religiously a non-fundamentalist Baptist Christian. I don’t find any conflict between the different aspects of my beliefs. I wouldn’t specifically object to allowing business owners to choose not to provide goods for a gay wedding but I think the RR have shot themselves in the foot through their past behavior. People too often assume the worst of their motives and overreact.

Seeking to have your views enshrined into laws isn’t an expression of your own freedom; it’s an act of oppression against those who don’t share your beliefs. The hostility towards those who describe themselves as “religious conservatives” in a business setting is a reflection of the perception of them as bigots in regards to their interactions with people with different religious views. They are less popular hires in situations that involve writing and public speaking because of concern that they will do something that will get their employer sued. Most employers don’t go out of their way to risk either their money or reputation. The one thing that would help such people would be an actual campaign to change public perception

I share many of Rod’s and others’ concerns, but I do think it’s important to recognize where (some of) the left’s ire at conservative Christians comes from: the acquiescence in being used politically. Please note that in Indiana and Arkansas it was Republicans who tried to grab the “religious liberty” banner. It was a religious business that went to the Supreme court to be able to dictate to is employees what kind of contraception they could not have. It was Republicans who thought making anti-guy marriage a ballot box issue was a clever move. And if anyone ever tried to make a case against same-sex marriage that did not did not turn on wishing to use the state to validate what had become a pretty narrow sectarian view of marriage, I did not see it.

Does this justify what happened to Brendan Eich or the discrimination against Christians in Academia? Resoundingly no. But it does help to explain it.

As a matter of personal liberty, I do not wish to see individuals have to bake cakes and take photographs of people they dislike or disagree with or think are behaving sinfully. But as a Christian, I feel sullied that someone seeks not to do business with a homosexual person on “religious” grounds. I get that they may sincerely believe and have grounds for believing that homosexuality is sinful. I don’t get the “religious” desire not to do business.

@Turmarion – cheers, and thanks! Funny thing, once it looked like I was in for sure, my ‘bad Catholic’ wife started wearing a head covering to church, citing her dead great grandmother’s opinions on the matter.

@Hector – a link to my story is on the previous page. Let me know when you’ve read it.

“They seemed amused, not judgmental, by the display. This was in the early 1980s.

Since then, of course, the psychiatric field has been forced by a militant gay lobby to drop the idea of homosexuality as a DSM disorder. However, I can guarantee that many, many psychologists and psychiatrist would still view homosexuality as a human disorder, a kind of sickness, as they do alcoholism”

Actually, the DSM removed homosexuality as mental disorder in 1973, before the “gay lobby”, militant or not, had much power to force anything on anyone.

Has anyone noticed that many of the same media outlets leading the charge against Indiana are now acknowledging that the RFRA wouldn’t have allowed anti-gay discrimination after all? They’re saying this after they won. I found this on both Slate and Vox.

Why would they say this? First, they don’t want advocates to rest on their laurels. Downplaying Indiana helps pivot to the next battle. More importantly, they want to signal to the courts not to interpret the existing 19 RFRAs as a protection for the dissenting bakers and photographers, even though they had been stridently arguing that they do exactly that just the week before.

Truth is what you want to achieve, and it changes as quickly as your goals change.

The problem is, it seems that Republicans and conservatives are utterly incapable of making a simple argument based on Constitutional fact. They keep bring in the Bible which may be a great book but has nothing to do with our laws. This issue is about same sex marriage, nothing more. The simple and factual argument is this. NO public business in this county has the right to deny secular service to anyone. A meal in a restaurant, a hotel room, a birthday cake etc. Marriage on the other hand isn’t regarded as a secular arrangement to most religions, it’s seen as the union of one man and one woman instituted by God regardless of it being performed by a priest, minister or JOP. In other words, a religious institution. In that context and in keeping with the 1st amendments guarantee of religious freedom the government has no right whatsoever to force someone to be an active participant in a religious ceremony that has no validity in their religion and in fact may be considered immoral and a sin.

One commenter mentions that the government has no right to force anyone to be an active participant in a religious ceremony. I think that is true, yet it still leaves room for controversy over who is considered an active participant and what is a religious ceremony. I accept that some believe that same-sex unions cannot be sacramental – I belong to a church that teaches this. But if a same-sex wedding cannot be religious, then if I were a professional videographer I would not be forced into being an active participant in a religious ceremony, since such that wedding is not such a ceremony. If I believe the tenets of my religion then I cannot claim my religion prevents me from being the videographer since it doesn’t violate my religion if some other confused people think it is a religious ceremony. Take it a step further down the line and the wedding reception is simply a party after the (non)religious ceremony and again I have no claim to turn down business on religious grounds.

The simple truth is that homosexuality -particularly of the male variety- is fundamentally incompatible with Christianity. If one is right, the other must be wrong. The Gays have the money and the power, and they are going to ensure that their views are enshrined in law. They must ensure that their lifestyle is considered right and good in the eyes of the law, and that means they must crush the Christians at any cost.

When the Lord chooses to punish a people, He sometimes removes the Church. The Church is the greatest blessing God gives to men. When he removes it from their midst, the people suffer mightily. Today, the Lord is removing the Church from among us. The people will suffer.

The revolutionary environment created for Christians in America is that they are at liberty to life according to their faith. However, this 18th Century approach to laying aside the Western European religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries.

What Christians and the crazy left would do well to remember is another dimension of Christian history. Specifically, the Christian martyrs: those who were martyred because they would not offer sacrifice to Roman gods and goddesses, because they would not marry and chose a life chastity and virginity defiance of Roman social norms; because they would not commit apostasy by subscribing to Islam, because they stood against the Soviet atheists.

The left elites are the western heirs of to the militant atheism of Lenin and Stalin, the eugenics policies of Hitler, and to the revolution class hatred of Robespierre.

But against all that, it is essential for Christians to follow Peter, and pray for the civil authorities, and Paul: This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.

So if they come after the Christians, they’d have to come after everybody.

Why? Do you think they act on reasoned principles? What’s to stop “them” from being arbitrary? If they dare not even go into a certain areas of certain cities because of fear of physical retribution, why would they not simply ignore them, just leave them alone?

“…he is convinced that if his colleagues in academia knew of his faith, they would make it very hard for him…”
How many of us in industries dominated by graduates of ‘elite’ universities have learned that our jobs depend on keeping our mouths shut? The Progressive religion tolerates no dissent or even doubt about their premises. They have no respect for other people’s beliefs or opinions, especially if those misguided ‘deniers’ or ‘haters’ or ‘1%ers’ haven’t been blessed with the wisdom that a degree from an expensive ‘top’ university has conferred. Our history has been blotted out or distorted. Our traditions are sneered at. In the old days the expression, “It’s a free country” was common. Not anymore. Because it’s not.

I am speaking only for myself here. I gave up on religion when Ronald Reagan found religious people such willing hands in defining America down as something less than it had been, an America where it was OK to deny basic human services to people less fortunate than you, and where we were no longer to some extent each responsible for the other.

“Republican politicians are abysmal at making a public case for why religious liberty is fundamental to American life.”

Worse, Republican politicians, and many conservatives in general, are, and have, abysmal at making the public see why marriage as God gave it is fundamental to American life. Likewise, they’ve also been abysmal at painting same-sex “marriage” (SSM) for the farce that it is.

For example, how come we never hear a conservative ask a supporter of SSM (in other words, a liberal) how they would “discriminate” and define marriage? EVERY position in this debate requires a measure of “discrimination.” What about the polygamous, incestuous, “throuples,” and the like? What about the “B” in LGBT? Should they not be allowed to “marry” according to their “sexual orientation” and thus, have two spouses?

Marriage, the oldest institution in the history of humanity, is one of the oldest truths revealed by God. If anything is true, marriage is true. Any conservative politician worth my vote better be able to articulately defend it.

Was it Aristotle? Logos…Ethos…Pathos…in rhetoric. Discussions to reveal deeper truth are no longer possible. Post modernism throws a rock at the stained glass window of the classical metanarrative and promotes identity. We are left trying to find beauty in the shards of glass. Contempt and shame are assigned to those who believe differently. Where is tolerance or compassion? Orwellian.
Toska…time of sadness and grieving loss.
Hope?
The starry sky above and moral law within me. Kant
Beauty will save the world.
Doestoyevsky
The emerging church in China. By 2050 China will be the largest Christian country in the world. Christ the Eternal Tao.

While Sister Helen Prejean was mentioned, her faith opposition to capital punishment was never discussed. Nor the opposition to war from many Catholics as well as the Peace churches.

The reasons for not supporting ROTC at a number of schools was based on those schools’ religious faith opposition to war.

Bottom line is religious liberty is defended by conservatives only for issues that conservatives agree on, but on war, capital punishment, and paying for such activities, any opposition is considered a crime or even treason.

[NFR: This is a fantasy, you know. You’re making this up. One does not have to agree with the cause for which another person exercises religious liberty in order to support that person’s right to do so. — RD]

I’ used to read Rod Dreher in his days at The Dallas Morning News, and I am glad to,have come across this article. I find Rod to a very good voice for Christians. I, myself am a very liberal and increasingly skeptical religious person. Probably close to approaching heresy. I am also one of those people who believe liberal= better than, so it is really, really good for me to read an article like this every once in a while. I tend to only come across hateful and ingnorant religious people, or people who have molded religion into a more culturally liberal expression. It’s interesting to hear from very religiously conservative voices who are smart, compassionate and open.

I think Rick Warren put it best, “Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don’t have to compromise convictions to be compassionate.”

“Power and emotions drive issues in a way that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago.”

A hysterical assessment with no basis in reality. “Power and emotions” form the core of what it means to be human; they have made and remade civilization throughout the course of history. Conservatives above all should recognize that.

“‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ forced them to segment off a part of their lives in a way that was wrong.

Actually, this is misleading. The DADT policy did not force a change of behavior on gays in the military. the DT part of the policy was ALREADY the law. The DADT policy was supposed to be, and was celebrated as at the time, a way to allow gays to serve in the military as long as they were not open about their sexuality. The whole point of the policy was to avoid the small mess that has been made since the policy was repealed in favor of openly serving (the mess isn’t in the service, it’s in the politics being played by the gay lobby and by the trampling of the First Amendment by the gay lobby and by some in the military with an agenda or a fear of the gay lobby).

Treating unwanted sexual attractions is pretty much like treating an addiction. It can be a long, challenging journey but millions have made it and in both cases relapses are not desired but fairly normal. Lingering same sex temptations are similar and planned for by Counselors.

I very much appreciate this article and I have shared it with my church board and the board of directors of a non-denominational Christian camp that I am affiliated with. I am 67 and have been a Christian since I was 16. Having said that, I have to admit that I’m still learning what it means to trust in God and to see Him as all powerful. Right now I think many Christians are reeling from the sell-out that we have experienced by the governors and legislatures of IN and AR. Actually, that may turn out to be a good thing. For too long many Christians have made gods of our laws, government and country. I have always loved America (at least its ideals) and will continue to do so. However, America is not God. Christians are not to have a spirit of fear but of boldness. So for example, if I were a shop owner and asked to provide my service to a gay wedding, I would immediately say yes. But I would tell my gay customers two things. First I would like to be invited to their wedding. Second I don’t agree with gay marriage and would like to exercise my First Amendment freedom of speech in a tactful, and respectful way at their wedding. I suspect that most such customers would say “no thanks” and find another service provider. On the other hand if they did indeed invite me, I would provide the requested service to the best of my ability, pray hard and go to the wedding to carry out the Great Commission. Jesus went into the homes of “sinners” and preached God’s love and their need for repentance. If He could do it, being perfectly sinless, then I guess I can because in my case it would just be one sinner talking to another. Indiana simply means it is a time for American Christians to really identify who their god is and begin to truly rely on Him.

This quarrel is a fruit of Luther’s Reformation, of his claim that works have nothing to do with one’s salvation. Peasants in his day took him at his word and we soon had the Peasants Rebellion, which Luther had the princes put down with force of arms.

Christ teaches that God requires of us both faith and works. Luther taught otherwise and American jurisprudence seems certain to side with Luther, that we cannot claim that God prohibits certain conduct.

This may be an occasion for the Catholic Church to rescue a hundred million Protestant Americans form Luther’s error. If one believes that certain works or conduct is proscribed by God, then one should be or become Catholic or Orthodox.

I am really troubled reading this blog about a “professor [who] is a practicing Christian deeply closeted in the workplace…” He should heed Mordecai’s warning to Esther (Esther 4:13-14)and then follow her example.

I think Rick Warren put it best, “Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don’t have to compromise convictions to be compassionate.”

Good. I’d implore Rod and his commenters to keep this in mind whenever they claim that secularists and liberals hate Christians.

““Alasdair Macintyre is right,” he said. “It’s like a nuclear bomb went off, but in slow motion.” What he meant by this is that our culture has lost the ability to reason together, because too many of us want and believe radically incompatible things.”

No, MacIntyre’s point was that that occurred quite some time ago. The entire cultural history of the United States is downstream of it.

All that has happened over the question of gay marriage is that one particular group now finds it no longer dominates and its viewpoint is not deferred to. But there was no moral consensus previously; it has simply swapped places with the minorities that it lorded over.

That’s how MacIntyre could write his books long before gay marriage was an idea anywhere near mainstream discussion.

@AndrewP:”The simple truth is that homosexuality -particularly of the male variety- is fundamentally incompatible with Christianity.”

Nope. First, there is no reference anywhere in the Bible explicitly to female homosexuality. Second, we can readily work out directly from the Bible what the major incompatibilities are – violations of the 10 Commandments, for example. Hence adulterous behaviour (and child sexual abuse, covered by the same commandment, I’m informed by a rabbinical friend) is incompatible. Breaking the Sabbath is also (fwiw the alleged breaches of the Sabbath by Jesus are no such thing – only someone ignorant of Jewish law would so assert). Perjury and slander likewise.

Against that, homosexual acts are but one of many sins mentioned in Leviticus – and are not singled out for particular opprobrium any more than having sex with mother and daughter at once.

In fact, the inconsistency between what Jesus taught and what many Christians in the US claim to believe (or claim their conscience tells them) leads to the conclusion, obvious to me, that there are many people who simply hide their bigotry with a thin veil of purported religious belief, who get very upset when the veil is removed, but who benefit when their co-religionists who should know better – and yes, I include you, Rod – seem unwilling to recognize what actually lies beneath that veil, and what is the true substance of their opinions.

I think we need to chill out a bit. Persecution is a strong concept. This tenured professor is not being persecuted. He is too cowardly to state his beliefs despite the worst that will happen is some other poorly dressed professors will ask him why he believes such strange things in the absence of any serious evidence.
What happened to the pizzeria (I use the term loosely) was indeed unacceptable and the result of a mob mentality aided by social media. No one should be closed down from threats, but no one should also be dumb enough to proclaim for no reason (it was not like anyone asked them to cater) that they would refuse to cater a homosexual’s wedding. That why laws like this are so self defeating; they empower the most vulgar and thuggish to strut their thruggishness and then encourage the puritans and scolds on the left to act like puritans and scolds.

“And the simplest and most accessible key to our self-neglected liberation lies right here: Personal non-participation in lies. Though lies conceal everything, though lies embrace everything, but not with any help from me.”

“And from that day onward he:
•Will not henceforth write, sign, or print in any way a single phrase which in his opinion distorts the truth.
•Will utter such a phrase neither in private conversation not in the presence of many people, neither on his own behalf not at the prompting of someone else, either in the role of agitator, teacher, educator, not in a theatrical role.
•Will not depict, foster or broadcast a single idea which he can only see is false or a distortion of the truth whether it be in painting, sculpture, photography, technical science, or music.
•Will not cite out of context, either orally or written, a single quotation so as to please someone, to feather his own nest, to achieve success in his work, if he does not share completely the idea which is quoted, or if it does not accurately reflect the matter at issue.
•Will not allow himself to be compelled to attend demonstrations or meetings if they are contrary to his desire or will, will neither take into hand not raise into the air a poster or slogan which he does not completely accept.
•Will not raise his hand to vote for a proposal with which he does not sincerely sympathize, will vote neither openly nor secretly for a person whom he considers unworthy or of doubtful abilities.
•Will not allow himself to be dragged to a meeting where there can be expected a forced or distorted discussion of a question. Will immediately talk out of a meeting, session, lecture, performance or film showing if he hears a speaker tell lies, or purvey ideological nonsense or shameless propaganda.
•Will not subscribe to or buy a newspaper or magazine in which information is distorted and primary facts are concealed. Of course we have not listed all of the possible and necessary deviations from falsehood. But a person who purifies himself will easily distinguish other instances with his purified outlook.
“

I was speaking with my 85 year old, Fox News Watching, lifetime Republican father, he was a bit confused on the issue and asked
“So this law lets a business not serve Queer People.”
“If it’s part of their religious belief”
“Well if you can deny service to Queers, then you can deny service to the Colored, and you could deny service to the Jews, or even Christians. That’s not America.”